On Aug. 20, 1745, Francis Asbury, first bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States, was born in Hamstead Bridge, England.
In 1833 Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd U.S. president, was born in North Bend, Ohio.
In 1866 President Andrew Johnson formally declared the Civil War over, months after the fighting had stopped.
In 1890 Gothic writer H.P. Lovecraft was born Howard Phillips Lovecraft in Providence, R.I.
In 1914 German forces occupied Brussels during World War I.
In 1915 the White Sox purchased the contract of “Shoeless” Joe Jackson from Cleveland for $31,500.
In 1918 Britain opened its offensive on the Western front during World War I.
In 1920 pioneering American radio station 8MK in Detroit (later WWJ) began daily broadcasting.
In 1944 Rajiv Gandhi, who would succeed his mother, Indira Gandhi, as prime minister of India, was born in what was then known as Bombay.
In 1952 singer-songwriter John Hiatt was born in Indianapolis.
In 1953 the Soviet Union publicly acknowledged it had tested a hydrogen bomb.
In 1964 President Lyndon Johnson signed a nearly $1 billion anti-poverty measure.
In 1968 the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact nations began invading Czechoslovakia to crush the “Prague Spring” liberalization drive of Alexander Dubcek’s regime.
In 1977 the U.S. launched Voyager 2, an unmanned spacecraft carrying a 12-inch copper phonograph record containing greetings in dozens of languages, samples of music and sounds of nature.
In 1979 swimmer Diana Nyad succeeded in her third attempt at swimming from the Bahamas to Florida.
In 1989 video executive Jose Menendez and his wife, Kitty, were shot to death by their sons, Lyle and Erik.
In 1996 President Bill Clinton approved the first minimum-wage increase in five years, raising the hourly minimum by 90 cents to $5.15 an hour over 13 months.
In 1998 Monica Lewinsky went before a grand jury for a second round of explicit testimony about her trysts with President Clinton.
In 1999 the CIA pulled the security clearances for former Director John Deutch for keeping secret files on an unsecured home computer. Also in 1999 three Japanese banks announced a broad alliance plan that would create the world’s largest banking group with assets of well over $1 trillion.
In 2000 Verizon Communications and unions representing 50,000 workers reached a tentative agreement on a new contract as a two-week strike neared an end. Also in 2000 Tiger Woods won the PGA Championship in a playoff over Bob May, becoming the first player since Ben Hogan in 1953 to win three majors in one year.
In 2001 Sir Fred Hoyle, the astronomer who coined the term “Big Bang” but never accepted that theory for the origin of the universe, died in Bournemouth, England; he was 86.
In 2003 hundreds of thousands of people marched in Venezuela, demanding the recall of President Hugo Chavez. Also in 2003 the United States won the women’s overall team gold medal at the World Gymnastics Championships in Anaheim, Calif.; Romania took the silver medal and Australia the bronze.
